If You Can’t Fix it (Yet), Twist It!

Here’s a question for you weight losers in progress: can/should you change your broken mentality first, to enable you to achieve your weight loss and fitness goals, or does moving forward with some health improvement first in the form of fitness and healthier eating (with the resultant weight loss that will come) make changing your broken mentality more possible, even inevitable? 

Notice how on The Biggest Loser, for example, people are “pushed” by the trainers to work out and eat right and get results, and THEN as they start to realize the beginnings of success and dramatically improved health they are then able to work through the mental crap that’s been causing them to be heavy in the first place.  Which in turn ensures their continued success.  However, for the rest of the dieting world, it is often “taught” that you have to fix your mind before you can truly and permanently fix your body.

 I think all this time (3 or so years now) that I’ve been thinking and writing about the subject of wanting to lose weight and improve my health, I’ve been trying to figure out how to fix MY mind.  It seems like that must be the answer to being able to stick with the fitness and healthy eating, right?  And it’s what that chick wrote about in “Women, Food, and God” that Oprah and everyone else on earth swore was so genius on the subject.  I tried to read it, and then although it seemed to speak to me at first, I kind of fell away from it and lost interest.  So, after blogging about myself for 3 years, observing other successful people, asking a lot of questions, and reading about weight loss, fitness, self-improvement, etc., and learning a ton about myself along the way, I still have yet to crack “fixing” my mental code as the first step. Further, on the other side of the coin, I do have fits and spurts of working out, but I haven’t pulled it off long enough or consistently enough to make it a continued and reliable habit to build on.  I love going to my gym (as long as it’s not too late and I run out of steam), and I am scheduled to do so 4 days a week, hoping to work my way up to 6, but so many things come up that easily interfere with that plan.  Instead of working to implement alternatives, I tend to let things derail me easily.  I prefer to walk/run, so if the weather’s bad or it is already dark or I am not able to get to the gym because the husband is working late, I let it go.  I could do a home workout video, or at least some moves around the house, but I don’t.  You know, on account of the inertia that I haven’t quite gotten past and all.  Inertia is evil.  My comfy couch in front of the TV, wrapped in a blanket and laying on a pile of pillows is, sadly, one of my favorite places on earth.

So, if I don’t have a Bob or a Jillian yelling at me to just do it with nothing but freedom from responsibilities and time to work out; and if I can’t just make myself feel and behave and treat myself the right way just BECAUSE, what’s a girl to do?  And then this morning it dawned on me: maybe until I can truly CHANGE the thought process, maybe I can just manipulate it to my benefit instead?!  I’ve kind of thought about this before, but never fully thought it through enough to make sense of it.  For example:  I apparently don’t give a rip about hurting my body and health by filling it with terrible unhealthy foods and too much of it and being utterly lazy, but I would never in a million years dream of doing that to my son or letting him do that to himself.  By no means am I a perfect nutritionist for him, but I make an effort to ensure he gets a decent amount of fruits and vegetables in his diet, enough protein, keeps the salt and sugar in check, etc.  And I make sure he is active enough, and doesn’t watch too much TV or play too many phone games.  One of the issues heavy people commonly have is “not loving themselves enough to take good care of themselves”.  I still don’t entirely get this in my case, because I like a LOT about myself, I truly do.  But somewhere down in there is clearly a glitch, because I apparently do not love myself enough YET to take better care of my body.  So what if I take this incorrect thought process and twist it around so it helps me, until I am better equipped to fix/work thorough correcting it?  I would never dream of letting any harm come to my sweet boy that means the absolute entire world to me, maybe I should look at it as not letting anything harm that sweet boy’s mother that he needs and would be crushed by the loss of?  You’re not SUPPOSED to think that way, but maybe I can try to use it as a crutch to manipulate myself into going down the right path and then embracing the right reasons to take care of myself for the sake of MYSELF along the way.

 Thoughts?